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Yeah. I really don't know what's going on. It's getting a bit silly lately. Especially since 29% world pop seem fine but when you look at continent pop VS is barely able to keep up on Indar and usually outnumbered on Esamir and Amerish by a fair margin.
I guess it's because the VS overall have less players that the fourth faction is switching over making it even worse. Kind of a self-fullfilling prophecy thing.

I always keep looking at Amerish and think: well, 50% xp bonus sounds nice. Then I look at the pops and see 30%+ NC, 50% TR and >20%VS and don't bother with it. Make it 100%xp and people would maybe bother. But nobody wants to get slaughtered for +50%xp when you could just farm at the crown (or whatever farmers go to these days, I lost track)

Vanu have better places to be on a Saturday.. All the spandex .. Hitting Eurovision..

This is the reason I didn't play during primetime yesterday, but of course the situation is bad all days of the week.

As the least populated faction, we rely on cooperation for success. I get the feeling TVA hasn't been as active as before. At least we have not been very active within TVA. This weakens VS Miller and allows TR and NC to stomp us.

I also feel that VS has seen a lot of the nerf-bat without getting any significant buffs in a long time, making VS less appealing for the masses. Although outpopped in general, the VS is not outpopped on all servers and the extreme situation on Miller should mostly be a community issue.

Biggest issue I see. That 143 30 shot weapons are damn up against heavies.

It seems like a lot 4390 damage in a mag. However, against a heavy with resist shield or even any other shield you'd need be very accurate player to deal with him at all. You'd need somewhat of 30-35% accuracy on that gun to reliably kill a shielded heavy before reload.

How the hell you can have VS player retention, when your newbies can't stand a chance against just a heavy due to feeling powerless? Be a heavy? But if you don't like being meatshield only? What if you'd like to be able to support. The only way VS can reliably deal with heavies are maxes and other heavies. Going for headshots works perfectly, however it's something other factions can do to and relies so much on skill, that VS new players don't have.

So yeah, I used to say, back in day of my first alt (Traitrotas) VS guns feel sucky and are way harder to use. My opinion changed a bit, but they are still sucky and generally 4390 DPM weapons are not good enough to be used, though your LMG selection is best, your Carbine and AR selections are fucking terrible.

That is enough to drive away about half of potential population, especially, when TR have over 1k more damage in their mags.

Biggest issue I see. That 143 30 shot weapons are damn up against heavies.

It seems like a lot 4390 damage in a mag. However, against a heavy with resist shield or even any other shield you'd need be very accurate player to deal with him at all. You'd need somewhat of 30-35% accuracy on that gun to reliably kill a shielded heavy before reload.

How the hell you can have VS player retention, when your newbies can't stand a chance against just a heavy due to feeling powerless? Be a heavy? But if you don't like being meatshield only? What if you'd like to be able to support. The only way VS can reliably deal with heavies are maxes and other heavies. Going for headshots works perfectly, however it's something other factions can do to and relies so much on skill, that VS new players don't have.

So yeah, I used to say, back in day of my first alt (Traitrotas) VS guns feel sucky and are way harder to use. My opinion changed a bit, but they are still sucky and generally 4390 DPM weapons are not good enough to be used, though your LMG selection is best, your Carbine and AR selections are fucking terrible.

While this is true for the redundant stuff clinging to our arsenal (CME/maybe the Polaris), the HV45 and Serpent are good enough CQC weapons to deal with Heavies. Otherwise, the standard Carbine/AR are just better used from slightly further away, IMO. If you've got the certs/SC, the Zenith or VX6-7 are actually pretty good, versatile carbines. Don't forget that our SMGs/Shotguns are perfectly respectable either.

As for ARs, I just don't know. I couldn't recommend anything apart from the HV45. I know some people like the Corvus, and I've never tried the Equinox, but the rest of the AR class just can't compete with the HV45 in the Medic's natural fighting range. The NS11-A/Corvus are decent midrange weapons, but I find that as a medic, I need to be able to clear enemies at close range.

With all that said, the VS weapons often have good reload times and balanced stats (apart from first-shot multiplier), giving you versatility. I am envious of TR/NC Carbines/ARs, but you can make do pretty well with the HV45 and your choice of VX6-7 or Zenith.

I'm pretty sick of the Vanu underpop. Alert victories seem very few and far between and at other times, its absolutely no fun to be redeploying every 10 minutes while you constantly get rolled by the other factions.

Underpop wouldn't be that bad if we were organised. But as an empire, I feel we're terrible at it compared to the others - there are very few actual public PLs and its a known fact that we suffer from a lack of active outfits. I can name more active outfits that run 2 squads+ daily for each of TR and NC than I can with VS.

VS Server pop is getting silly now. 25% at the time of writing this. Just looked at borderline tacticals pop charts and it's not even the worst its been this week. What the hell happened?

Indar is usually tied and the other continents are heavily under popped in my experience. Which rather suck since I hate fighting on inder(its always the same few bases now), so im stuck picking the few fights that can be had on Amerish and Esamir. Its a good way to XP farm though.

But yes, I am also wondering where everyone is, I've noticed I sign out much quicker now also when I see the population indifference, its just not worth getting farmed.

Before I begin I appreciate that I'm about to recommend is not everyone's cup of tea. But here's what I do to make fun of the under-pop, maybe you'll like it too...

Pick your favourite infantry class, look for a base that you're losing, spawn there, get out of the spawn room and rack up some kills. Infil is great for this. If you think of yourself as one of the Spartans in the 300 then you'll have your mind in the right place - you're facing impossible odds but for every minor success you're a hero. I've been doing a lot of this for the past few months and it's got to the point now I can honestly say I'm not even noticing the under pop. Moreover, when I'm part of a defence which begins with a spawn camp and ends with us chasing the enemy back across open ground I feel like a god. You can still have a really good time when under popped - you just need to set appropriate goals.

As for open platoons and coordination I think what we need is basically just better use of orders. If people only use it for sensible call outs for reinforcements and a reasonable chunk of players follow those orders then we could be punching well above our weight. However, I don't see people actually following orders reliably until a decent chunk of xp is tied to it. Hopefully that's what the directives update will do for us.

Before I begin I appreciate that I'm about to recommend is not everyone's cup of tea. But here's what I do to make fun of the under-pop, maybe you'll like it too...

Pick your favourite infantry class, look for a base that you're losing, spawn there, get out of the spawn room and rack up some kills. Infil is great for this. If you think of yourself as one of the Spartans in the 300 then you'll have your mind in the right place - you're facing impossible odds but for every minor success you're a hero. I've been doing a lot of this for the past few months and it's got to the point now I can honestly say I'm not even noticing the under pop. Moreover, when I'm part of a defence which begins with a spawn camp and ends with us chasing the enemy back across open ground I feel like a god. You can still have a really good time when under popped - you just need to set appropriate goals.

+1 to this. Those times when I'm playing alone, but not flying, this is pretty much what I do as well.

Lots of fun to be had in those circumstances Wally, I agree. I tend to either go medic to pick up easy revives from out of the lines of fire, we've all revived those guys that charge in five or six times to the same torrent of bullets, and each revive is worth cold hard exp.

I go infil if I want to get some kills. Often when the enemy is so focused on a spawn camp, it takes them a long time to notice their numbers being thinned by a crossbow/knife combo infil behind their lines. Quite easy to get some good kill streaks going, as long as you don't panic and get flustered.The bonus to infil is that you can chuck out a few darts and start racking up exp from the plentiful idiots in the enemy zerg that stray into view of the spawn room warriors.

Underpop wouldn't be that bad if we were organised. But as an empire, I feel we're terrible at it compared to the others - there are very few actual public PLs and its a known fact that we suffer from a lack of active outfits. I can name more active outfits that run 2 squads+ daily for each of TR and NC than I can with VS.

/whine

Having the PLs there doesn't mean they're organised. NC's organisation appears to have devolved into a few outfits listening to Zhukov rant at them and having maybe one in every 10 requests for support responded to.